This invention relates generally to a unique seafood product, one example being a crustacean product in the form of a shrimp, and to a process for making that product from comminuted fish meat.
The process of mechanically deboning fish meat has received increasing attention during the last twenty years throughout the world in order to utilize efficiently nutritious proteinaceous resources, such as numerous underutilized marine species. Many efforts have been made recently to produce less expensive, more attractive, more acceptable fabricated products for human consumption from mechanically deboned fish meat.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,303,008, there is disclosed a process for producing a restructured food product from fish meat paste; however, that process is complex, and requires elevated pressurization of the paste in a mold during cooking.
There is need for a simple, reliable process to produce a fish paste crustacean product such as a superior shrimp product the shape of which closely simulates the shape of a natural shrimp; and there is need for such a process wherein, with very simple mold structure or tooling, a superior shrimp product, as disclosed herein, is produced, the back of the molded product being indented along the curvature thereof, to simulate a vein groove. Also, there is need for a process producing a shrimp product which is juicy and tender, the meat of which is not undesirably compressed, and which has the texture and shape of the crustacean.